Redcar is moving to JRuby

redcareditor.com

18 pointssiim3 comments

I wish them good luck with this, I think it's going to be very hard.

I know everybody is disgusted with Java GUI's, at least on OS X. They just don't fit in. SWT uses native widgets, but I don't think anyone would dare call SWT GUI's native on OS X.

However, a text editor might be something different. A large part of the GUI is the text view itself. If you can use SWT to power that, and use native font rendering with all it's pro's, then you should do it. Using system fonts, system font smoothing etc. is very important in a text editor. I wonder how it compares to Core Text?

I just hope people won't be turned off by the rest of the GUI. I've looked at a few examples of SWT applications on OS X, as I don't really use Java apps myself:

http://www.rssowl.org/images/overview/rssowl_mac.gif

http://zekr.org/quran/zekrimg/mac2.png

You'll have a hard time making the non-text-edit parts look acceptable.

I've found you're actually better off forcing MetalLookAndFeel on OSX than you are with Java/Apple's incredibly crappy Cocoa skin.

I agree, but remember, it's not Cocoa, they use Carbon for SWT's OS X look and feel.

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